Testing – DevopsCurry

An Brief Introduction On Automation Testing

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 07:50:26 +0000

In today’s article, we will be talking about what is automation testing in software development, what are its types and frameworks, and more…

What is Automation Testing? A Beginner’s Guide

Testing is a very crucial phase of software development. It ensures the software or application is ready to enter the market. Different kinds of tests help the development teams find anomalies in various aspects of the software like user interface (UI), security, performance, etc. However, as crucial as it is, testing also demands significant time and energy.

Especially in the times of manual testing, the testing phase involved the following challenges:

Manual testing of each code and feature was time-consuming and tedious.
It mostly involved boring, repetitive tasks.
It required a separate group of manual testers which added to the business’s costs.
Like any other manually performed task, it was prone to human error.

In short, manual testing was inefficient and unproductive. Resources that could be spent on designing and developing new features, were instead spent on testing the old ones. This inefficiency called for automated testing or test automation…

What is automation testing?

Automation testing or test automation simply refers to the use of tools to automate the testing phase of software development.

It involves the following processes:

Firstly, developers create a test script using a programming language. A test script is a set of instructions that an automation tool is supposed to follow to verify an application. In other words, it tells the tool what to do in order to confirm if the application is working or not.
Then the test scripts are run using the automation tools and the data is collected and analyzed.
Failed tests indicate problems in the software. The tests can be re-run after corrections.

Benefits of automation testing

Automation testing requires minimal human intervention, thus allowing the development teams to focus on designing and innovating new features and updates.
It saves time and costs while maintaining a high quality of work.
It helps in performing more number of tests in less time, thus improving test coverage when compared to manual testing.
It helps in the early detection of defects.
It reduces the chances of the human-error which was quite inevitable in the case of manual testing.

Types of test automation

Unit testing: Unit testing is the first phase of testing. It involves testing individual units or components of the software in isolation. It helps in the early detection of bugs and flaws.
Integration testing: After unit testing, comes integration testing which tests the integrity of the software. It makes sure that all the units or components effortlessly function together to make the software work as a whole.
Smoke testing: Also known as ‘build verification testing’, smoke testing is used to check the stability of the application. If the application passes this test, it goes for further testing. Smoke testing is usually done by QA (Quality Assurance) engineers.
Regression testing: Regression testing is used to ensure that the new codes or updates do not negatively affect the existing features. It is run after every time a new code changeis developed.
Performance testing: As the name suggests, performance testing is used to test the performance i.e. the speed and responsiveness of the software under a particular workload. It helps to optimize the software during peak hours and heavier workloads.

Test automation framework & its types

Test automation frameworks are a set of guidelines, tools, and practices that facilitate software testing. They include test scripts, coding standards, libraries, etc. to speed up test execution and aid in continuous testing. Linear, modular-based, and hybrid are some of the most common types of frameworks we will be talking about here:

Linear framework: Linear framework is the most basic and common framework used for smaller applications. In this, the tester interacts with the software in a defined order while the framework records its actions in a script. Now, the tester simply plays back the script to automatically perform the testing. Hence, it is also called a ‘record and playback’ Because of its simplicity, it requires minimal expertise and is suitable for beginners.
Modular-based framework: In this framework, the application is broken into smaller and independent units or modules. A test script is created for testing every module in isolation. Modular-based framework allows independent scaling and easier maintenance of each module. However, creating the framework requires time and good programming knowledge, making it suitable for experienced programmers.
Hybrid framework: Hybrid framework, just as it sounds, is a combination of various kinds of test frameworks. It combines the strengths of the above-mentioned and many other frameworks for maximizing test effectiveness while mitigating their drawbacks. However, as powerful as it is, it demands a high level of expertise and proficiency in programming.

Challenges of automation testing

Shifting from manual to automated testing can require high initial investments in the form of money and time. Choosing the appropriate tools and softwares requires time and experimentation.
Not all kinds of tests can be automated. For example, exploratory testing which mimics the user actions is better performed manually.
Different automation tools require knowledge and expertise in different programming languages.
Automation tests can sometimes wrongly detect flaws in the codes when there’s really no issue.

Conclusion:

Automation testing is a key component in the modern software development lifecycle, offering numerous advantages that help teams build better software more efficiently. Automation testing is a powerful tool that helps improve the efficiency, accuracy, and coverage of software testing. By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, testers can focus on more complex and creative aspects of testing. This not only speeds up the development process but also ensures that the final product is of high quality and reliable.

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DevOps: Make your Applications more secure using the Fuzzy Testing technique

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:58:53 +0000

Understanding Fuzzing in 2023 to make your Applications more secure

What is Fuzzy Testing?

Barton Miller first discovered Fuzz testing in 1989 at the University of Wisconsin.

Fuzzy testing or Fuzzing is a software testing method that works on invalid or random data from different sources. The invalid data (or FUZZ) are then fed into a software system that checks for coding errors and security loopholes present in the software or connected networks.

This type of security testing allows you to monitor the system for anomalies using automated or semi-automated techniques. This testing will enable you to describe the system testing process using a distributed approach. It is a predictive approach to find bugs within an application or software.

There are two security testing types- Static application security testing (SAST) and Dynamic application security testing (DAST). The SAST approach works on static applications and checks for known errors that may result in security vulnerabilities, while the DAST approach works on running applications to check for bugs. You can consider Fuzzy testing as DAST as fuzzy testing involves running applications to monitor how it responds to different input types and generates various errors.

Why to do Fuzzy Testing?

It is always a safe approach to assume that our application, software, or network are prone to errors or any vulnerabilities which need to be discovered, monitored, and removed. Thus make Fuzzy testing an essential part of the development and testing phase.

There are many reasons as why we should adopt Fuzzy testing into our environment.

It allows you to detect security loopholes within the system.
Based on assumptions, this testing is applied at the early stage of development that saves much of the time and cost to detect serious security threats.
Fuzzy testing allows you to reach a convincing conclusion when combined with Black Box testing, Beta testing, etc.
Hackers commonly use this technique.
It can also be considered similar to negative automated testing.
It helps you to find the vulnerability of the system.

Why Fuzzing?

Fuzzing is a technique that is used to test the system for any bugs available. For this, we provide invalid or Fuzzy data that encounter system problems to enhance the overall robustness of your underlying programs. Fuzzing your system does not require knowing and reviewing the code that provides quick and potential bugs’ redemption. But if you have the code handy, bug detection seems an easy task.

Before fuzzing any program or application, you should know what the test cases will target part of the code. It is not always the scenario that any application will accept any kind of Fuzzy data. The data should be in the correct format to be accepted.

Image Credits: https://blog.qatestlab.com/2011/03/10/what-is-fuzz-testing/

Benefits of Fuzzy Testing?

Several benefits can be leveraged using Fuzzy testing-

Fuzzy testing allows you to enhance the software testing process.
The bugs can be severe and are mostly used by hackers, easily detected while fuzzing the system.
It consumes less time in detecting the type of anomaly that is unknown to the team.
It is an effective way to encounter system or application bugs to be required at every new interface.
You can use fuzzy testing with large projects having invalid or fuzzy inputs.
It enables you to find those vulnerabilities that are often missed by static program analysis.
Fuzzy testing allows you to detect system crashes and potential memory leaks.
The test design for fuzzy testing is straightforward and free of any assumptions about system behavior.
Also, you can conduct fuzzy testing on the closed projects to review its quality.
Fuzzy testing helps to boost software stability and improves system security.
Fuzzy testing tools are well-established and free of charge.

Some popular Fuzzy Testing tools

You can use a variety of web security tools to conduct Fuzzy testing. Some of the tools are mentioned below.

1. Peach Fuzzer

Peach Fuzzer is more effective than a scanner that provides more security coverage. Unlike other testing tools, peach fuzzer allows you to find known and unknown threads.

2. Spike Proxy

This tool enables you to look for application-level threats available in web applications. Spike proxy covers only basic vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

3. Webscarab

As this tool is written in Java, it is portable to any platform. This tool is used for analyzing applications that communicate using HTTP and HTTPS protocol requests.

4. OWASP WSFuzzer

This tool is a GPL’d program written in Python, which mainly targets web services.

Conclusion

In Software Engineering, Fuzz testing helps identify the presence of bugs in an application or software. Though Fuzzing cannot guarantee complete detection of bugs in an application, but by using Fuzz technique, it helps ensure that the application is more robust and more secure, as this technique helps to expose most of the common vulnerabilities.

The post DevOps: Make your Applications more secure using the Fuzzy Testing technique appeared first on DevopsCurry.